Posts
- Professionalism
- Service
- Personal Relationships
A lot of agencies throw around attributes like those above, but have a hard time backing the words up, or describing what they mean. Staff bios can help. For instance:
- Professionalism – Continuing education, designations, and awards all back up and help explain this attribute; so it’s not a bad idea to include that information in staff bios.
- Service – There are two kinds of service, and the first type has no place on you bios since it does nothing to promote a brand or UVP that would differentiate your agency. The second kind of service merits consideration for publication. I would lump services into two categories: meeting minimum customer expectations, and exceeding expectations. Returning phone calls on a timely basis and processing transactions accurately are both expected. If you don’t measure up, you have a problem; but if you do meet these expectations, you don’t get any extra credit. On the other hand, if you have producers, account managers or CSRs, whose job it is to ‘meet with at least 5 customers a month to review their protection needs’ (annual review) that kind of information can be compelling in a bio. Likewise, individual situations where an agency staff member has found better insurance protection for a customer or helped out in a claims situation will make the ‘service’ component of your UVP tangible and meaningful. Inclusion of these little stories in bios is worthy of consideration.
- Personal Relationships – I read an article a few years ago about medical malpractice lawsuits that pointed out the relationship between average time spent with a patient and the incidence of malpractice lawsuits. The condensed version is that doctors who spent more time with patients were sued less often. That is, those doctors who bothered to build some kind of personal relationship benefited by spending less time in court and paying less for their malpractice insurance. Patients, and people in general, will cut you some slack if they like you; they will also be more likely to refer people to you. You definitely don’t want to be gratuitous in presenting personal info in an online bio; be sure any personal information you provide through staff bios actually represents and supports the kind of relationships you have and want to build. And you definitely don’t want to jeopardize anyone’s safety by putting too much personal information on your website. So this one requires some careful thought, but there are very good reasons for including this kind of information.
Active vs. Passive Bios
You may also want to think about how you might use your online bios. For example, you might want to include links to bios as part of your proposals to prospects (here are the professionals that will be your risk management team); or you might want to routinely include a link to a CSR or Account Manager bio as part of a new business ‘welcome package’, or when there is a change in service assignments.
